I guess our nano-warriors are on vacation:
- Tiny nanoparticles could be launched into tumours and heated up using light to destroy cancer cells, say doctors. This could help treat cancers which are inoperable and resistant to chemotherapy, they say.
US researchers, writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, say that experiments on mouse tumours have proved successful.
Cancerous tissue was destroyed and healthy tissue spared using the technique, they say.
The "nanoshells" are developed by a team from Rice University in Houston, Texas, who say that many tumours which are hard to treat by conventional means could be tackled this way one day.
The nanoshells are made from silica coated with gold, which would be injected into a tumour located using a scanner.
....Researchers elsewhere have made particles as small as one nanometre.
They believe it is possible to produce nanoparticles that "assemble themselves" using the same ingredients, but which could then be injected into the bloodstream to find their own way to tumours or be directed there using magnets.
These particles would behave like a "magnetic fluid".
....He said: "There are so many potential applications for this technology, because, with the self-assembling nanoparticles, they could be constructed with gold, or iron, allowing us to heat them up, and to guide them around the body." [BBC]
Article comments
1 - jadester
woah man. This shit's beginning to get scary...